by Rich Weil, M.Ed., CDE
Founder and Director
Transformation Weight Control

Did you know that the sight of food is the most potent trigger for a food craving, whether the food is directly in front of you or in your mind’s eye? Even tasting, smelling, handling, or talking about food isn’t as potent as seeing it! Out of sight out of mind is how some of our program participants approach it.

Think about how many times during the day you are exposed to food. Now think, what if you had a problem with alcohol, and every time you saw food, it was bottles of alcohol instead. You’d have alcohol on your brain all the time too, just like food, because food is everywhere. For heaven’s sake, there is Godiva chocolate at the Barnes and Noble Bookstore checkout counter!

Now think about how much food you are exposed to in your kitchen. Maybe you have kids at home who you bring home snack food for, but these are triggers for you. Well, how about everyone in the home has their own cupboard with their name squarely in sight so no one goes in who the cupboard doesn’t belong to? Or this. And this is a true story. Someone in our program years ago had three children who all loved snack food, and a husband who wasn’t far behind. So, guess what she did? And again, this is the truth. She had a locksmith install a clasp lock on every cabinet that had snack food in it! That took care of that. There was slight protest at first, but everyone got used to it.
Or several of our very own who learned from each other to put police crime tape across the entrance to the kitchen after dinner! That’s the kind of stuff you get inspired to do when you’re part of a community of people who really “get it”!

At TWC, you’ll learn from each other and we will  also teach you a million strategies to cope with all of this. We’d be missing the boat if we didn’t. But we go for a deeper insight too, exploring the biology in your body, and your brain, that you had no control over that creates these situations. I cannot say it enough. NONE OF THIS IS YOUR FAULT. It’s not a lack of will power nor self-discipline, moral failing, or character flaw. But we will help you. We’ve been doing it for 24 years!

AN EXPERIMENT
In 2014, I conducted an experiment where my hypothesis was that distracting your vision of food by tapping your finger across your forehead and watching your finger closely would interfere with the sight of food in your mind’s eye so much, that it would distract and wipe away the image of the food and reduce or eliminate your food craving. My rationale was that if vision is the strongest cue for a food, then what if you get people all worked up about their favorite craving food, have them rate it on a scale of 1-100, then have them tap, and then measure their craving again on the same 01-100 scale. To make the experiment complete with comparisons, I also had them tap on their ear so their finger was out of sight, and toe tapping under a table so their foot was also out of sight.

RESULTS
My results showed exactly what I had expected. Tapping your forehead while watching your finger reduced cravings more than tapping your ear, or tapping your foot under a table. The experiment ended right before Halloween and I remember one of our group members telling me she used the tapping technique on her forehead and she ate less Halloween candy!

This experiment got a lot of press. You can still find articles online about it today!!!

Have a look! 

To read about the experiment and watch videos of me demonstrating  the tapping, check out my blog, “Taking Control Over Food Triggers: Rich’s Tapping Experiment for Better Control”.

It was a quirky experiment but it really worked! Let us show you a million other ways to wipe the craving right out of your head.
You can reach me at [email protected]

© Richard Weil, M.Ed., CDE, 2024 All Rights Reserved